President Obama's standing has slumped among California voters, but he holds an expansive lead over potential Republican opponents, including two who have leaped ahead of the GOP presidential pack in California, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll has found.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney were tied at 22% among Republican voters. Two others, Texas Rep. Ron Paul and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, were barely in double digits, and a parade of other candidates fell well behind.

The poll by The Times and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences underscored the abrupt alterations in the Republican contest. Romney has been campaigning for the presidency for years; Perry had been in the race for mere days before vaulting into the shared lead in California.

But the survey also showed that Obama's strength in California has endured despite deep dissatisfaction among voters with the economy. In hypothetical matchups, Obama led Romney by 19 points, Perry by 24 points and Bachmann by 26 points.

much as he did during his campaign, but once he got the nomination and then the reelection, don't think it would necessarily MOVE him to the Left.

And I say this as an Obama supporter who viewed him as Progressive and am as disappointed as many are!

Good to know CA has become more anti-Republican. It's such an important State, we can't afford to have it turn Red. I was pleased that Fiorina and Whitman didn't do any better than they did, so happy that Schwarzenegger has made the party more unpalatable to the populace.

and with all the propositions that always come up i feel better knowing i can focus on some of those other things without worrying about whether republicans can take the state in a presidential election.

CA became a state in 1850 and has voted for the winning candidate in the electoral college in every election since 1852 except: 1880, 1884, 1900, 1912, 1960, 2000, and 2004. CA voted for Nixon, a former Congressional representative for an Orange County district, all the three times he ran: 1960 (lost to Kennedy) and his winning 1968 and 1972 campaigns. Then voted for Gerald Ford in 1976 despite Ford beating former state governor Reagan in the primary. And for Reagan both in 1980 and 1984 and for Reagan's vice president in 1988.

And I just discovered that Herbert Hoover, born in Iowa, lived in California when he began his political career. Although CA voted for him in 1928, it voted for Roosevelt in 1932.

Recently, CA gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill redirecting CA's electoral college votes to the popular vote-winning candidate. (If Florida had such a law, Gore would've been president!)

26. The choice between a nightmarish end and the never ending nightmare...

...is a honey-trap.

If the trend continues, you'll end up on the same rock bottom with any of the two 'choices'. With the current state of affairs, voting blue seems like just taking the more scenic route to the same destination.

I know it's easy to be a smart-ass from the sidelines, and apologies to anyone who is offended by this, but having followed the developments in the US closely over the last two decades I've come to the conclusion that what you really need is, well, actual democracy. Representation. MORE political parties.Yeah I know. *sigh* Just needed to post this here just once.

27. Our system is rigged by the two major Parties to favor the two major Parties. (For that, they were

able to act in a bipartisan manner.) And not only our political system, but the TV debates.

In fact, the TV debates, which are far from unimportant, are usually rigged against certain of the candidates who are within the two major Parties.

Beyond that, third parties find it very difficult to raise money. Therefore, they are in danger of becoming pawns of the one of the major Parties or the other. For example, Republicans donating to Greens in order to lure their votes away from Democrats.

The Greens can't really afford to turn down any money that is legally coming to them, but do they promise anything else to Republicans in return? Some claim they do.

I am not disagreeing with you, just pointing out some of the difficulties. A movement within a Party--e.g., the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party of which Wellstone spoke, is another way to go.

Looking back on the last 40 years of political development in Germany (where I've lived a very long time),there are some parallels despite the fundamental differences in voting systems. It pretty much was a three-party system in the early seventies, the conservative christian democrats (CDU), the social democrats (SPD) and the liberal free democrats (FDP). When the CDU didn't outright win, they would form a coalition with the FDP who then would do pretty much as told although an SPD-FDP coalition did happen once with surprisingly good results.

When the Green party first appeared and moved from being ridiculed to being voted for, not only did it mobilize voters that hadn't bothered to vote before, but inevitably it mainly took votes from the SPD and was hated for that. After the Greens arrived, it took 16 years (4 elections) to break the CDU's grip on power - with an SPD/Green coalition. This kind of coalition had also moved from being 'ridiculous' to a 'pure thought experiment' to a'possible alternative on federal state level' to federal state government and then finally to Government.Leave it to chancellor Schroeder (SPD), Germany's third way social democrat and admirer of Tony Blair to ruin the SPD in the following 8 years. But that's a different story. Had the SPD stayed true to its roots, this would have worked.

As it was, and this is defined by your second alternative, the left wing of the SPD was so alienated by the neo-liberal policies enacted by the Schroeder Government that had nothing to do with the founding principles of the party that it came to a split within the SPD, forming the left party (LINKE) together with the remnants of the former German Democratic Republics socialist party (PDS). Again, this new party was shunned (for its ties to an unpleasant recent past in the DDR, something SPD and CDU had aplenty as well btw.), ridiculed and, surprise, voted for by disenfranchised SPD and Green voters who both felt their parties had moved to far to the right.This time around it only took 4 years for the new party to get influential and form coalitions on federal state level with SPD or SPD and Greens in combination. What is more, quite recently the Greens won the home state of the CDU, the first time ever Germany got a Green state government, with the SPD as junior partner in the coalition. A Green government suddenly seems possible.

So... what I want to say is that it is very difficult to establish a new party and usually requires some kind of crisis, but it is possible. And of course, there may be a very long transition time where the established conservatives rule almost unchallenged. For the USA with Republicans of today a nightmare scenario - the fear of that is certainly well founded. It's just that the longer a party gets away with saying 'we're not as bad as them' the closer the two parties get and the more disenfranchised everybody else gets.

Please don't get me wrong. I don't want to lecture anybody, just want to say there could be some hope; although I'm afraid this would lead to a series of Republican governments that would be disastrous on a global scale. So, thanks to anyone reading this rambling reply, I've been thinking about this for years now

It's so sad, we're in danger of them taking away our own thing, peace. I give it another year before swarms of pukes call for pulling out, when they realize it's a winning issue at the polls. Also, Tea people are much more anti-war than neo-cons like Bush and Rove. Many pukes will lose to Tea Baggers in the primaries next year.

aired a very snarky op ed at Perry's expense just now, describing Texas as the poster child for climate change, and wondering not only why on earth Perry is still denying climate change but also why Perry doesn't try to capture the renewable energy issue since Texas also leads in windmills.

Powered by DCForum+ Version 1.1 Copyright 1997-2002 DCScripts.com
Software has been extensively modified by the DU administrators

Important Notices: By participating on this discussion
board, visitors agree to abide by the rules outlined on our Rules
page. Messages posted on the Democratic Underground Discussion Forums are the
opinions of the individuals who post them, and do not necessarily represent
the opinions of Democratic Underground, LLC.